Olympus mZD 14-150mm f4-5.6 Experience Diary

[deckitout]

Brian

Many thanks for taking the time to take those shots, most helpful

Phil

I'm fairly sure that they're completely different designs. The Olympus lens is specifically designed from scratch for m4/3rds (shorter distance from mount to sensor) and for fast CDAF - with lightweight focusing elements.

Cheers

Brian

 

[Djarum]

I'm fairly sure that they're completely different designs. The Olympus lens is specifically designed from scratch for m4/3rds (shorter distance from mount to sensor) and for fast CDAF - with lightweight focusing elements.

Cheers

Brian

I'm not too keen on OLY designing similar lenses as Panny since we need more and different lenses, but I think they realized, from a market perspective, that a cheaper option to the Panny needed to exist in the market.

 

[Djarum]

Brian,

How quick does this lens focus in comparison to the collapsable zoom? Is it faster than the 4/3 40-150 with the adapter?

 

[Brian Mosley]

Brian,

How quick does this lens focus in comparison to the collapsable zoom? Is it faster than the 4/3 40-150 with the adapter?

Comparable to the Lumix 14-45... very fast, in fact the Pen focuses so fast with the mZD 14-150 and mZD 9-18, I'm happy to shoot with CDAF allocated to the shutter (usually, I have it separated on the AEL/AFL button)

Cheers

Brian

 

[Chuckr53]

Technical Lens Review

FWIW: SLRGear.com has posted a technical review of this lens at Olympus Lens: Zooms - Olympus 14-150mm f/4-5.6 ED M.Zuiko Digital (Tested) - SLRgear.com!

 

[Djarum]

FWIW: SLRGear.com has posted a technical review of this lens at Olympus Lens: Zooms - Olympus 14-150mm f/4-5.6 ED M.Zuiko Digital (Tested) - SLRgear.com!

I've looked at this several times. The wideangle and middle part of the zoom I can accept, but the long end has some horrible decentering. I think more samples need to get out there to see if this is a QC issue or not. One of Brian's images I think exhibited some corner wierdness..not sure if its from lens decentering or not.

 

[Brian Mosley]

Some more samples from today - especially to answer the question of whether the lens is sharp at full zoom... these images are developed from raw using the free Olympus Viewer 2 converter - no sharpening other than scaling for web using Lightzone.

E-P2 + mZD 14-150mm f4-5.6
1/500s f/7.1 at 150.0mm iso200
View attachment 146529

E-P2 + mZD 14-150mm f4-5.6
1/640s f/7.1 at 150.0mm iso200
View attachment 146530

E-P2 + mZD 14-150mm f4-5.6
1/250s f/7.1 at 150.0mm iso200
View attachment 146531

E-P2 + mZD 14-150mm f4-5.6
1/250s f/7.1 at 150.0mm iso200
View attachment 146532

E-P2 + mZD 14-150mm f4-5.6
1/200s f/7.1 at 14.0mm iso200
View attachment 146533

E-P2 + mZD 14-150mm f4-5.6
1/500s f/7.1 at 14.0mm iso200
View attachment 146534

E-P2 + mZD 14-150mm f4-5.6
1/500s f/7.1 at 14.0mm iso200
View attachment 146535

E-P2 + mZD 14-150mm f4-5.6
1/400s f/7.1 at 120.0mm iso200
View attachment 146536

E-P2 + mZD 14-150mm f4-5.6
1/320s f/7.1 at 150.0mm iso200
View attachment 146537

E-P2 + mZD 14-150mm f4-5.6
1/320s f/7.1 at 150.0mm iso200
View attachment 146538

Cheers

Brian

 

[Djarum]

Brian,

Those look pretty good. The 5th image exhibits exhibits some of the problems at the wide end. The top left has some weirdness too it.

 

[Brian Mosley]

Yes, and I made sure I switched off IS this time... I need to do some more shooting at 14mm to see what's happening.

Cheers

Brian

 

[las Palm as]

hello Brian, with this photos olympus will sell lot of lens, jeje

 

[Djarum]

The long end seems impressive. As sharp as the 4/3 40-150mm at the center.

 

[Laserguy]

Brian, thanks for posting these! These look better than some of the test shots we've seen (of course, they're also much better photos, for the most part), and they're much better than what I expected based on the SLR Gear tests. Perhaps I'll put the lens back on my wish list...

 

[Brian Mosley]

Obviously, it's difficult to convey how sharp this lens is at full zoom in these scaled down images - all I can say is that the full size images are very impressive.

Here's a crop to illustrate...

Original, reduced for web :
E-P2 + mZD 14-150mm f4-5.6
1/640s f/7.1 at 150.0mm iso200
View attachment 146539

100% crop :
View attachment 146540

Original, reduced for web :
E-P2 + mZD 14-150mm f4-5.6
1/250s f/7.1 at 150.0mm iso200
View attachment 146541

100% crop :
View attachment 146542

Cheers

Brian

 

[BBW]

Pretty impressive to me.

 

[Djarum]

Those geese look similar to the one's I took pictures of over the weekend.

Those look sharp on the long end.

 

[Brian Mosley]

Some more wide / mid range examples from this morning.

These are all processed from raw using the free Olympus Viewer software... no CA correction applied, no sharpening other than scaling for web.

E-P2 + mZD 14-150mm f4-5.6
1/500s f/7.1 at 14.0mm iso200
View attachment 146566

E-P2 + mZD 14-150mm f4-5.6
1/320s f/7.1 at 17.0mm iso200
View attachment 146567

E-P2 + mZD 14-150mm f4-5.6
1/1250s f/7.1 at 14.0mm iso200
View attachment 146568

E-P2 + mZD 14-150mm f4-5.6
1/800s f/7.1 at 80.0mm iso200
View attachment 146569

E-P2 + mZD 14-150mm f4-5.6
1/1000s f/7.1 at 45.0mm iso200
View attachment 146570

E-P2 + mZD 14-150mm f4-5.6
1/320s f/7.1 at 14.0mm iso200
View attachment 146571

E-P2 + mZD 14-150mm f4-5.6
1/250s f/7.1 at 60.0mm iso200
View attachment 146572

E-P2 + mZD 14-150mm f4-5.6
1/400s f/7.1 at 14.0mm iso200
View attachment 146573

Cheers

Brian

 

[elandel]

Nice pics. This may be my next allround lens.

 

[Brian Mosley]

...and some more from earlier this evening.

E-P2 + mZD 14-150mm f4-5.6
1/400s f/7.1 at 14.0mm iso200
View attachment 146592

E-P2 + mZD 14-150mm f4-5.6
1/500s f/7.1 at 49.0mm iso200
View attachment 146593

E-P2 + mZD 14-150mm f4-5.6
1/640s f/7.1 at 150.0mm iso200
View attachment 146594

E-P2 + mZD 14-150mm f4-5.6
1/1000s f/7.1 at 150.0mm iso200
View attachment 146595

Cheers

Brian

 

[Brian Mosley]

It seems to me, one of the core values of m4/3rds and the Pen form factor in particular is lightweight, compact portability... after carrying this combination for a few hours, this is the position I've found works for carrying the camera in a relaxed, secure manner.

View attachment 146632

View attachment 146633

View attachment 146634

View attachment 146635

Cheers

Brian

 

[Brian Mosley]

This is an interesting image - it shows the quality at 14mm, where I think the lens is at its' weakest... this is as much a test of my raw converter workflow, in dealing with distortion and CA - I would be very interested to see how much better you can do using your own raw workflow.

I have uploaded the raw file here, and would appreciate you posting your own conversion with some crops to show 1:1 detail as I have done below :

E-P2 + mZD 14-150mm f4-5.6
1/100s f/7.1 at 14.0mm iso200
View attachment 146672

Centre crop
View attachment 146673

Bottom right corner crop
View attachment 146674

Bottom left corner crop
View attachment 146675

Left edge crop
View attachment 146676

Top left corner crop
View attachment 146677

Top edge crop
View attachment 146678

Top right corner crop
View attachment 146679

Right edge crop
View attachment 146680

Hope that helps

Cheers

Brian